My Crowd

Again, I’m standing in the pit at the SuperPages.com Center in Dallas, TX for another loud concert. Loud because concerts are loud, and loud, because I am ten feet from the stage. I try to explain to my fiance that I actually enjoy listening from the ‘grass,’ but he doesn’t feel the same.

I’m way out my league tonight, though. As in…my apparel categorized me as the type to be anywhere but here on this evening. Ratty tees, bald-headed men, massive piercings, cargo shorts, and scantily-clad tops were in the mosh pit around me. There were actually a few crowd surfing instances as well, which don’t tend to go over with me too well (no pun intended). And I just loved the girl in front of me waving her ‘cig’ to the song and dodging the ashes that hit the wind.

But hey, I’m here, I’m here for the first concert in Dallas that Blink 182 has done since the revival of the band earlier this year. Fallout Boy, All-American Rejects, and that kid who sings the song about college opened for the band. I’m just minding my own business, trying to hear what’s actually being sung and trying to figure out why there is an animated rabbit as a logo/theatrical performer on the screen. Meanwhile, my hair is literally getting blown back from a combination of noise and mega-watt fans.

Apparently, the cool thing to do at a concert is to throw your [full] cup of beer as high/hard into the air as possible and watch it drench the crowd around you…angering some, disregarded by many. I guess it did not matter to these people that I was wearing expensive shoes (now sticky on the insole and freezing my foot) or that my black knit fluffy coat isn’t fun to wash. Whatever, I got over it pretty quickly. I’m zoning out again, what I do best in the middle of feeling my whole body vibrate to the beat of the drum set, when I am pelted across the shoulder. Bryan is also pelted across the chest. Whatever happened to a ‘hey, I’m about to throw my drum sticks into the crowd,’ or ‘hey, watch your eyes.’ Some mangly teenagers who weren’t even supposed to be in the pit section barreled past us to pick up the wooden prize. Of course we would be the ones to get hit at a concert with drum sticks.

Travis Barker did an amazing rotating-suspended-drum-set finales, and we left…just in time to see one of the hardest party-goers make it horizontal on the curb. Ya, I’m totally Blink 182 material.